1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the use of character codes to telecommunicate data. More specifically, and in particular, the present invention comprises a system and method for the use of variable duration pulses and/or variable duration spaces between electronic or photonic pulses, each representing a different base 10 number, which are transmitted using an ultra wide band or fiber optic system.
2. Problems in the Art
Currently, computers create, store, and access data which is coded using the binary language of 1's and 0's. Computers routinely access binary coded files remotely via a telecommunication network. Computers and telecommunication networks use the same binary language to create, store, and access data. At the stroke of a key a computer transforms various forms of input into a numerical representation. Many different methods of transformation have been put into effect. Morse Code was perhaps the first such method to be widely used. Today, the majority of systems all use a binary language or code to transform various forms of input into numerical representations and vice versa.
Much like Morse Code, binary numbers use only two variants to represent vast quantities of textual data. For instance, in 7-bit ASCII code, the textual number “3” is represented in binary as “0110011” and the textual letter “A” is represented in binary as “1000001”. Each bit in the seven bit representation screen is either a “1” or a “0”.
Problems arose with the use of many different types of binary encoding. The many different types of binary coding were not consistent and the many types of human language resulted in different textual representations from the same set of binary numbers. For instance, ASCII and ISO 646 were used for English-language data, while ISO 2022, an extension of ISO 646, is used for Latin based scripts common in Europe which tend to employ various accent marks. This new standard became known as “Latin-1”. Similarly, there is now “Latin-2”, “Latin-3”, etc.
A solution was sought. That solution has appeared in what has become known as “UNICODE”. After several attempts at a multilingual system, UNICODE, short for Unification Code, was developed to provide a unique number identifier to every possible piece of textual data. Using a 16-bit encoding means that code values are available for more than 65,000 characters. While this number is sufficient for coding the characters used in the major languages of the world, the UNICODE Standard and ISO/IEC 10646 provide the UTF-16 extension mechanism (called surrogates in the UNICODE Standard), which allows for the encoding of as many as 1 million additional characters without any use of escape codes. This capacity is sufficient for all known character encoding requirements, including full coverage of all historic scripts of the world.
Though UNICODE has become the multilingual code of choice for American manufacturers, several groups in the Far East have proposed and implemented a UNIX version of a multilingual code. This code uses an editor known as Mule, for MULtilingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs). This editor uses many escape sequences to provide a multilanguage capability.
No matter which multilingual code becomes the world-wide standard, all of them must be eventually converted into binary numbers for use on computers and transfer across networks and the internet. As the individual universal code numbers increase in size, so must their binary number representations. Further, if a system based on escape sequences is used, many levels of representation may be necessary. This, too, requires longer binary representations. Further, current mechanical drives, such as standard computer hard drives, store textual representations as binary numbers. Longer textual representations require longer binary representations which in turn requires more physical space.
The longer the binary representation, the longer the process time and transfer time for data. As most current applications use some type of buffering when transmitting data, the limited 1 's and 0's of binary also require large areas in which buffering may take place. As more and more systems move to wireless methods of communications and storage, transfer and processing time will become critical. It is therefore desirable to provide a method of minimizing the size of data representations.
There is therefore a need for a character code and transmission system and method which avoids these and other problems.